Day 8: Swimming Pools in France

First thing, it was the girls turn to exercise, so we went on a run all together: me, Carla and Lucy.

Lucy and I took the kids to the French community pool, which was an interesting scene.  When I arrived I noticed many notices warning of what was prohibited at the pool.  One thing that was prohibited was American style swim trunks. I couldn’t figure out why, but they let Henry borrow some tiny hot pant swim trunks.  He was totally embarrassed to put them on but luckily they let him wear his swim shirt, which completely covered the tiny suit.  We had to pass through this maze of lockers and restrooms and when we finally figured out how to get to the pool we were also forced to remove our shoes because they weren’t allowed on the pool deck.  We were also forced to walk through little pools of water to clean our feet every time we entered or exited the immediate pool area.  When we immerged the pool was completely filled with almost naked kids. I only saw one girl with a one piece suit on.  All the little girls were wearing tiny bikinis and the boys, of course, were all in the tightest suits and speedos.  They also made me put floaties, on Clemmie, which are not allowed in American pools and since Clementine is so comfortable in the water and loves to go underwater, I was hesitant, but they were pretty insistent so I put them on her.  Lucy saw the most gorgeous tall, dark, and muscly French boy wearing a speedo and stalked him for a while.  She also ran into him on the street while she was doing laundry, so he must live close to us.  Lol.  Having so many young kids and not knowing all the rules, I felt like we were getting hovered over by the pool police.  The most hilarious part of this whole runaround is that at one point we saw a giant squirt of poo coming out of Clementine’s diaper that was smeared all over the pool deck.  We quickly removed her from the pool and changed her diaper on the grass.  I wiped what I could off the edge of the pool and the pool deck, but it obviously got in the pool water.  When it was time to leave, I changed Henry back into his shorts and as soon as they saw him they rushed over and said he had to put his other suit back on.  I told them I was leaving so they were ok with it.  I started to ask them why all the run around with the cleanliness.  No one spoke English, so I began to leave, but they called after me and had someone who actually spoke English tell me what all the fuss was about.  Apparently they put less than half the amount of Chlorine into the water so they’re forced to take measures to limit the dirt and outside grime....and all this to "save the earth from Chlorine".   The problem with this is that unless French babies are different than American ones, poop and pee is going to get into the pool anyway and how can they limit that? At our pool at home they make Clementine and Vivi put on two layers of protection, which still doesn’t keep the poop juice from escaping out of the diaper.  When I finally realize that either one has pooped in their diaper, all the fine poop has mixed with water and escaped through the permeable swim diaper and all that’s left is large chunks of undigested food.  So, basically there’s almost no way to avoid poop and pee getting into the pool.  After hearing all this and realizing that Clementine had pooped in their untreated pool, I was happy to swim in the ultra concentrated chlorine pools of America…and to be leaving. 

After the pool, I took the kids to the park and Justin took Alex and Carla to the bus station where they spent the last couple days of their trip in Marseille….away from our screaming babies and chaos. 

Day 7: Annecy and Chamonix

Today we drove up to an incredibly gorgeous lake town called Annecy, which is known as the Venice of France.  The town consists of a beautiful clear lake right next to a steep, stunning mountain covered in greenery and around the lake is a perfectly manicured town complete with freshwater channels fed from the lake.  The channels and streets are lined with huge hanging baskets and flower boxes dripping with flowers, with almost no garbage.  Plus, it’s nice and cool, the water doesn’t stink, and I didn’t even see any construction.  These are major differences between Annecy and Venice.  Yes, Venice has more canals, but it’s dirty, stinky, disgustingly hot in August and you can hardly get where you want because they’re always trying to fix some ancient bridge or dredge a canal to fix a sinking house.  One thing France has that Italy doesn’t is a sophistication and charm.  It seems like France has a very well functioning infrastructure and they take time to worry about the details and they can because they’re on top of all the major maintenance issues that Italians struggle to maintain.  I saw no road construction, no unattended pot holes, good road signage, street sweepers cleaning up every night and hanging baskets adorning every town every few meters.  Even the larger cities were clean.  I am thoroughly impressed.  Back to Annecy….So as we walked around we were met with street performers at every corner and picturesque bridge after bridge.  We found a darling candy and cookie store and we bought the kids giant suckers.  I do have to say that the cookies and candy in Europe just aren’t as good as we have it.  People from Europe say that they don’t like our sweets because they’re too sweet, but if I’m going to eat something full of butter, I want it to taste good or else it’s not worth the calories.  The French pastries have PLENTY of sugar in them so why don’t they sweeten their cookies? The cookies are not only tasteless, but super hard and dry.  So after the kids refused the nice French girls’ offer to try their cookies, we settled on giant cube suckers that the kids dropped a million times on the cobblestone streets.  Yuk.  We unsuccessfully tried to take a photo of our kids on this gorgeous bridge, but the kid were already fading.  We wandered to a piazza where we let the kids run around and listen to a band called the “Red Hot Peppers” not to be confused with the “Red Hot Chile Peppers” who played New Orleans Jazz music that was really entertaining.  They also sung English in French accents.  We bought their CD, which wasn’t as good as their live performance, but is a fun reminder of our trip.  One of the cutest things we saw were these little pony bikes that the kids could ride around.  It was really picturesque to see all the little kids on the promenade on the little ponies.  Annecy was truly a magical place.  From there we went to my favorite new place on the planet called Chamonix.  It’s probably the most spectacular place I’ve ever been to.  Mont Blanc is a 12,000 foot mountain that rises almost vertically from a very low valley to a peak that’s completely covered in glaciers.  Naturally there are rivers and waterfalls flowing down from every peak.  Even though the mountains aren’t as high as the ones in Utah, the base of the mountain starts a LOT lower than our mountains so they seem to be three times higher from base to summit.  I’ve never seen anything that seemed so majestic.  It was almost unreal.  Unfortunately we arrived too late to take the tram up to the top so we ended up taking a stroll up the main street instead to gaze at the mountain.  Before we left, Bea put about 5 pounds of gravel in her dress and in every little hole and every flowerbed she “fed” the flowers or filled up the holes.  We found this pastry and chocolate store and as soon as we walked in we realized that we had made a serious mistake.  Bea was sneaking chocolates and taking bites out of them and then dropping them on the ground.  She successfully bit one and was about to take another one when the store owner yelled, “stop!” and we offered to pay for the candies.  She said it was ok, but we ended up buying a few things from her anyway.  The macaroon sandwiches were to die for.  The chocolates were normal and the giant merengue snowball we bought for the kids was like eating a huge chalk made out of sugar.  They kids pretty much hated it.  Haha.  Then as we were outside eating our treats, Clementine darted inside the store and grabbed a macaroon from the display window.  Lucy intercepted went in to tell the owner and this time she complained and said that even though those were only for display, it just wasn’t right that we let our kids come in and ravage her shop.  I totally agree.  So sorry.  At that point we realized that the kids were starving so we stopped at the nearest Fondue restaurant and ordered a giant pot of fondue that could of easily filled a gallon container.  There was an inordinate amount of cheese.  We were each given plates of sausages, cured meats, potatoes, salad and bread to dip and we were pretty much in heaven.  The view was spectacular and the kids were silent.  After dinner we walked up to the main street and watched a band of three brothers, reminiscent of the Jonas Brothers, playing two guitars with the youngest on the drums.  They only played cover songs but they were really great, especially the kid on the drums.  As I looked at that kid’s four limbs and head in constant motion I realized that the drums could be Henrys outlet instrument.  I will force him to play the piano but he might just LOVE the drums.  I think I’ll get him started on that ASAP.  The town was the town of our dreams with every single outdoorsy clothing and gear store known to man.  There were real estate shops around every corner and we salivated looking at the unrealistic possibilities.  We might be able to afford a studio apartment one day, but that’s about it.  Actually, the prices were less than half of what something of equal size would cost at any resort in Utah.  I wouldn’t hesitate to buy something there if we ever could.  The kids were almost dead at that point and we had a long drive home so we headed out and finally got into bed after 1am.  Totally worth it….

Day 6: Justin's dream ride turned nightmare

Day 6: August 7^th.  

Today was the day Justin and his buddy Alex went on a 12 hour ride in the French Alps and climbed almost 17,000 feet vertical on a ride called La Marmotte with the most difficult climb being L'Alpe D'Huez.  He came home saying that it was the most difficult ride he'd ever done in his life and he told me a few days later that after that ride he hated biking and didn't ever want to ride again.  He also had a run in with the French guy who owned a little shop at the top of a big climb because they didn't buy something before trying to use the rest room.  The funny thing about this trip is that I had always told Justin that I didn't like the few times I had gone to France because they always ended up making me cry somehow and he always told me that he would take me someday and that I would love it.  Well, I got along great with everyone, now that I can fake knowing French with my K-9th grade French background and Italian grammar.  I was loving all the conversations I was able to have with all the French moms at the park, but by the time we left France, Justin was grumbling about how rude the French people were.  haha.  

While Justin was on his ride I went on a run through darling little country French neighborhoods.  As I ran I marveled at how perfectly wonderful the houses were.  The details are so subtle but come together to make the houses so quaint, but real.  I thought back on all the people I knew who had tried to build a French style house or Italian style house but it just didn't look right or feel right and I wonder why.  I think it's just because it's not real.  People try to fake things that are old and then it just looks cheesy to me.  Anyway, the houses were all actually old and had so much character.  Then I did laundry and spent a lot of time letting the kids play at the park while I had conversations with every French mother there. They all couldn't believe I had four kids.  I actually saw the only other family with four kids during our entire vacation at that park but I just missed them as they left and I arrived.  At least people in France are having babies... but at the same time they're filling up their little lungs with smoke because EVERYONE in France smokes.  I seriously cannot believe how horrible.  Many people in Italy smoke too, but not like the French. 

Europe Day 1: From Inferno to Paradiso

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Kids eating leftover Breakfast food in the hotel room

 Day one of our trip basically consisted of three days melded into one.  We left Salt Lake on the 31^st, stayed overnight in Atlanta and then left for the Milan airport on August 1^st, landing on August 2^nd.  I pray a lot before we take any trips and I prayed so much that the kids would be good on the plane rides and I have to admit we had very little trouble with them.  There was a man behind us trying to have a gospel conversation with the couple next to them, who were born again Christians, and the only thing I caught him saying over the noise of the plane was, “And it’s like Jesus injected steroids, blah, blah….” I couldn’t quite make out the rest of it.  I was really weirded out by that phrase.  Haha. We ended up giving away one of the Books of Mormon we brought with us to give away, so that was good.   The plane ride to Atlanta left in the evening so by the time we reached the airport it was about 9pm our time, which wouldn’t have been so bad but when we reached our hotel, they realized that they didn’t have two pack-n-play cribs and had to spend the next two hours calling around to other hotels to locate some unused cribs and they finally reached us around midnight Utah time or 2am Atlanta time.  We even called them a week in advance and an hour before we got there to make sure they would be available for us on arrival so we could get the kids to bed right away.  It took a long time to get the babies to sleep without cribs and after I complained about how bad the service was they told me we would be “compensated” for our inconvenience.  We’ll just have to see if they make good on their word.  One of the main reasons we stayed at our hotel is because they have a great breakfast there, but in order to get breakfast we had to wake everyone up just before it closed at 9am after the kids had only gotten maybe 6 to 8 hours of sleep and we had maybe 5 hours of sleep, which we thought would be fine since we wanted them to sleep on the flight over to Italy.

After a long flight of free movies we arrived in Italy at 7am.  Henry slept all day!

I was really worried because I can never sleep on planes, especially holding a baby on my lap and I was already exhausted.  After breakfast we spent a couple hours swimming in the indoor pool and hot tub.  It was so cold inside their pool room so we were all huddling together in the luke-warm hot tub.  After the girls were complaining about being cold and we tried to wrap them up in the hand-towel sized towels they provided there, we looked outside and realized that there was a pool outside and, oh yeah, it was August in Atlanta so it’s probably really warm outside, which it was and we spent the last half hour playing outside.

We packed for the long flight over to Milan and left for the airport.  Check in went very smoothly except that Justin’s bike box was sent downstairs before we were able to set things in order so that took a while to sort out, but other than that things went smoothly.  The plane we took over here was very new and had giant screens with unlimited options for shows to watch.  This posed a problem for Henry who gets sucked into shows and will fight sleep just to stay awake to watch a show.  We thought all the kids would be exhausted and fall asleep very quickly, but Henry never slept once, Bea slept the entire time, Vivi slept most of the time and Clementine took about an hour nap and watched shows without sound for the rest of the trip.  We couldn’t believe her!   

The girls and their new friend Gaia

One of the annoying things that happened was that the baby hammock I ordered for the plane didn’t arrive and only the day before we left did I realize that the order had been cancelled. I ended up using my baby wrap to create a hammock that worked extremely well.  I wish I could have taken a photo of it, but maybe I will on the return flight.  I basically tied the hammock to the head rest in front of me(where Bea was sitting) and then connected it to the head rest to the right of me where Lucy was sitting so that it was set diagonally in between us, creating the most space and not really bothering either of us.  Lucy and I shared watching shows on her TV screen and both of us were able to get out since we were in the middle section of seats with Clementine to the left of Lucy.  Turbulence was so nice because it would swing Vivi back and forth which seemed  to keep her happy.  I think it worked better than the original hammock I had ordered because that one was meant to connect to the food tray and go from there down to your stomach, which now days is only about one foot of space and that’s definitely not enough for my large baby.  I did, however, have the luxury of having Bea be in front of me and Lucy beside me, or else it would have impeded others from  exiting.   A really nice American family living in Switzerland sat behind us with their two children named Amadaus(1 yr) and Gaia(3.5 yrs). 

Me and my airport support group, Bryn Migliore.  She was a gem and so beautiful!

 They had been traveling from Costa Rica and realized that they had left their car and house keys in the safe at their hotel and had to spend a couple hours after that super long flight waiting at the airport until they could figure out how to get home.  We also had to stay for a couple hours because we had to wait to rent our car or else we would have to return it too early in 6 days and be penalized for another day.  It all turned out great because since they were stuck and we were stuck, the kids got to play together, eat treats, watch shows and they actually had a fun time hanging out in the airport.  Every situation has a silver lining and I was glad to have been able to help them in a rough situation and her kids helped entertain my kids in the process. 

We were here for a couple hours just trying to survive

When we finally got our nine passenger van we were so ready to hit the road.  We spent the next few hours trying to find the “Quattro Portoni” Buffalo cheese farm.  Henry threw up in a ziplock bag and since nothing came up we realized that we hadn't fed our kids for a while and since Henry hadn't gone to sleep at all on the plane he was in pretty bad shape.  That throw-up baggie was left in there for quite a few days.  We got lost for so long but finally found it and it was well worth the wait.  Justin and I spent about a half hour touring around the farm with the owner and his wife talking about everything from obtaining and raising buffalo to making the products.  

Lucy enjoying her spot in the van.  haha.

 Afterward we had Lucy, Clementine and Violette come in to eat some cheese with us.  Henry and Bea unfortunately had fallen asleep in the car.  These wonderful people took large chunks of cheese and crackers and fed us the most delicious assortment of cheeses.  We ate in a room that was built in the 1600s.  It was one of those rooms that people in America have recreated in restaurants to make it look like it was old, but this place was actually that old and it wasn’t like they were trying to make a beautiful room to eat cheese in.  It was just plain beautiful. 

Alfio and Bruno Gritti with the lovely Elena.  I am looking a little grody.  haha. 

The whole farm is enclosed in four hundred year old buildings.  It's just incredible

Here Bruno is serving us delicious delecacies

Baby Buffalo.  Why can't I bring you home? Stupid USDA

Just born

Elena and Bruno, the owners were so generous and, of course, fell in love with my babies.  They packed up a cooler of delicious yogurt and cheeses for us, told us they would come to Utah to visit and we drove all the way to Levanto which is on the Mediterranean sea and is totally gorgeous.  At this point everyone was starving and just about everyone was crying in the car so we stopped for pizza and pasta for dinner and then headed over to our apartment where my good friend Laurel was waiting for us with her four boys.  Henry is in heaven right now and I wish they would stay with us the entire time!

The giant box of cheese they GAVE us to take home.  Italians are so generous!

They were in LOVE with my babies.  Vivi was so happy.  Meno male.

Buffalo milk yogurt. Smoothest I've ever had.  If we can make this it would be a miracle....someday

Day 5: Rain and Castles

As I was woken up by a serious hail storm, my thoughts were directed to poor Justin who had gone on a road bike ride early that morning.  He came home totally soaked and freezing cold with his hair shaped like the inside of his helmet.  He took a super hot shower and got into some comfy clothes.  We spent the next couple hours deciding if we should do laundry or go see castles and finally decided to see the castles just after I put the baby down to sleep.  So we packed everyone in the car and went to visit two antique castles/towns.  The first one was called Le Mont du Dauphine, which was really old and in a very well preserved state, but was more like a historical ruin.  The kids got to play with some other French kids in a park and we wandered around the town looking at the cemetery, the church and taking photos of the beautiful mountain views from up on top where it was built.  Strangely enough, the air smelled exactly like Utah air, whether it was because of the scrub oak or the slightly deserty vegetation or pine trees, it smelled exactly like Utah for some reason.  Looking in one direction the mountains looked like they could be part of the Wasatch mountain range, however instead of turning to find not much in all the other directions, there were giant jagged mountains and cliffs surrounding the entire place.  We couldn’t get enough photos of the hundreds of waterfalls coming off the glaciers high up the mountainsides.  The views are really spectacular and I can’t even explain how majestic they are. 

Then we headed over to another town called …….with an antique part of the city.  This place was so much more inhabited than the first place.  The main street had wonderful little antique shops and modern stores with restaurants and creperies with what looked like apartments over the top.  The town had been kept in pristine condition but looked like a legitimate midaeval town.  It was quite charming.  We ate some crepes and walked around town until it got dark and then headed home.  It was a pretty amazing day seeing things I have never seen before.  

Day 4: Phase two: Approach to France

Sunday morning we woke up really early to pick up our friends, the Armstrongs, and hopefully go to church.  We were going to be in Genova right on time but then arrived to find the church had moved and we had no idea how to find it since no one had internet and the address we had was the one on the church website that was obviously incorrect.  Lame.  Then, Clementine threw up all over her dress and shoes, so I guess that was a sign that we shouldn’t try to go to church.  We ended up walking through the old part of the city visiting a church, an old fake pirate ship and eating really delicious gelato.  What a Sunday. Sounds fun, but I would rather have gone to church in Italy.   Then we drove for a few hours to the French Alps to a town called Bourge D’Oisans to our mountain home.  On the way we stopped at a grocery store that had an automated lawnmower that looked like the Roomba for cleaning floors.  It was really fun to play with and it freaked out all the kids.  I really want one of those for our yard.  Why haven't I seen that before?  Our house has four bedrooms and four stories.  The house is pretty nice but lacks towels, soap, garbage cans, toilet paper and has really creaky stairs.  The town is very quaint and charming and is within walking distance to the town center.  The most spectacular thing about this area is how beautiful the mountains are.  Everywhere we go I want to take a photo. 

Day 3: Cinqueterre Adventure

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Cliff jumping oasis in emerald green waters.  Watch out for the jelly fish!

We were woken up early to catch a boat out to the cinqueterre, which we missed by just a couple minutes.  They even came back to pick up some cranky Italians that were left behind and we still missed it.  It turned out to be a blessing because the all day boat ticket would have cost us 200 Euros total for both of our families.  We ended up driving into the first cinqueterre stop and taking the train over to the beginning of the walk we wanted to do. 

Henry loved this accordion player

After we took a dip in the ocean, we hopped on the train only to realize that we had left our backpack on the platform just as the train was pulling out of the station.  We were all mortified because we had all our stuff, swimsuits, food and our money in that backpack.  Justin quickly had the conductor call the station and a policeman grabbed the bag.  We didn’t know that he had found the bag and spent the next 45 minutes waiting to find out if Justin had recovered the backpack. 

Our crew sans Laurel who was behind the camera.  What a fun group!

While we were waiting I noticed some Asian women cooing at my children and I asked them were they were from.  They told me they were from Japan and I immediately called Lucy over.  She charmed them with her amazing Japanese and as more and more Japanese people showed up they all took turns taking photos with Clementine who was performing beautifully.  She let them pick her up, said “cheese” in every photo and even kissed them on the cheeks.  They would put their cameras away and then simultaneously take them out every time Clementine did something else cute.  At one point she took my wide brimmed hat and put it on and I told her to put her hands on her hips and she looked just like a movie star on the red carpet with the paparazzi all around her taking photos, laughing and cooing at every move and smile.  

This might be the cutest shot of the entire trip.  Men all over Italy get together to talk and argue in large groups and I saw one and couldn't resist plopping Clementine in-between them all. 

 Justin finally got off the train and we were on our way.  We decided to explore the town of Monterosso before our hike and discovered an awesome swimming and cliff jumping area.  I stayed with sleeping Vivi and the others spent the next hour swimming and jumping off cliffs.  Justin got stung on his hand by a jellyfish and Lucy was picking them up with sticks and holding them by their caps, which was freaking out all the Germans.  Lol.  After drying off we headed back to the trailhead and headed out.  This trail takes about 20 minutes to walk and it’s completely paved.  It has been named the lovers lane or “via dell’amore”.  People have affixed locks with their names written on them all along the trail, wherever they can put them. 

No where else in the world...It's just fantastic

 Bea and Sawyer, my friend Laurel’s son who is Henry’s age, walked together down the whole thing.  It was darling.  Clementine was the trailblazer and left us in the dust most of the walk.  She loved hiking on the trail.  When we got to the next town we ate gelato, bought some fruit and bread for a snack and bought tickets on the boat for the ride home.  It was so perfect because since it was the last boat of the day they didn’t make us pay for any of the kids and it was just 7 Euro each to get back home.  That’s a lot better than the 200 we were going to initially pay. 

View from the boat

We passed by all the cinqueterre towns, took lots of photos and spoke to some people behind us who were adoring my kids, of course, and we told them about us and they told us they were friends who all worked for a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland.  They were really friendly and interesting to talk to.   Bea told me later that Sawyer had let her fall asleep on his back and since his shirt was black, she said it was so warm.  She also said, "I like him and I love him and I want to marry him because he's nice to me".  I was happy to see that Lucy got the shot of her asleep on Sawyer's back.  What a sweet boy

Bea, I hope you do marry this darling boy with a British accent.  He's a gem.

When we got home we had to get home quickly because we were going to be late to our pizza party!  I was a little distraught because I had not been able to find our nice camera and I spent a lot of time searching for it.  I couldn’t find it and eventually just went up to the party.  The pizza was different from what I had expected but totally delicious.  

Giant Italian style table with a million people eating brick oven pizza.  We lucked out!

 It was made in a pan and not right in the oven like I thought it would have been and she didn’t use fresh mozzarella, but the normal hard kind.  She also put olives and ham on top of the pizza and said that she doesn’t use basil on her pizza, only Oregano.  I’m not a huge fan of oregano but I will eat anything made by an Italian woman who loves to cook.  The pizza was excellent.  They also had beans and ricotta cheese on the table , which was excellent.  We brought some of our buffalo cheese and had the most lovely evening ever!  Pierra sung songs for us and Lucy, Me and Laurel sung three part harmony hymns for them.  We sung St. Francis’ song “All Creatures of our God and King” and “How Gentle God’s Commands”.  They loved it. 

The coolest thing that happened to me was that Pierra’s son in law guessed that we were Mormon just by the experiences he had had with them in the past.  I was so amazed that an Italian would have just come up with that guess.  That means Mormons are getting more common in Italy! Yay!  After that conversation started their daughter was asking me about our church and I taught her about the restoration and about our living prophet and apostles.  I felt like I was back on a mission.  It was such a wonderful feeling to be teaching the gospel again in Italian.  I’m so lucky that I was able to practice my Italian for months with Marianna before I went to Italy so I could feel comfortable speaking and not stumble over my words as I’m trying to speak with the spirit.  She gave me her address to keep in touch and I’m going to send over the missionaries.  They were such a darling family.  

Too Sunny

 I will pray that they get baptized someday!  Oh, I forgot to mention that Pierra gave us two jars of jam she had made that were apricot and blackberry.  The apricot was the best!  Delicious.  Thank you Pierra! We told them our camera was missing and none of them said they had seen or found anything, but miraculously the old pervert handed it to us super early the next morning saying he had found it up on the hill.  I feel like he had had it for at least a couple days and didn’t give it back to us even though he knew it was mine.  Dirty old man! Haha.  Well, maybe he felt the spirit while we were singing and decided to give it back.  

Cool Villa right by the beach.  Next time, we're staying here!